On the eve of the rather troubling report that the Samsung Galaxy S III will not be getting the Android 4.4 Kitkat update at all, Samsung's latest flagship smartphone, the Galaxy S4, is getting its bite of the popular candy bar.

First to get the Android 4.2.2 Kitkat update are the Exynos-based GT-I9500 model, while Snapdragon-based ones should get it soon afterwards. The update is region specific so some regions, including Russia and India will get it before other regions, but there should not be any big delays, at least if all goes well with the update process.

The new update brings all the Kitkat enhancements and improvements and needs around 1GB of free space.

It appears that Samsung’s Knox security system is anything but secure. Samsung rolled out Knox in the hopes of attracting more security savvy consumers to the Galaxy S4.

Corporate users place an emphasis on security and for years BlackBerry was the king of the secure always-on market. Knox was expected to give Samsung a competitive edge and allow it to seize more BYOD market share.

However, a team of Israeli researchers from the Ben Gurion University of the Negev found that Knox does not live up to its name. The researchers identified a vulnerability that allows corporate data to leak through the secure container. In theory, it should be possible to inject malicious code from outside the container and compromise its integrity.

Hackers could then gain complete access to communications records, messages and emails. Worse, an infected phone could go on to infect other phones in a secure network.

The university stressed that the vulnerability is a serious threat and the team classified it as a “category one” vulnerability, which is as bad as it gets. The rating is reserved for vulnerabilities that enable remote attacks on secure networks.

A key memeber of Google's Android team that you might recognize from almost every big Google I/O event so far, Hugo Barra, the vice president of product management for Android, has decided to leave the company and join Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi.

Hugo Barra announced his decision on Google+ and although he has been a key part of Google from close to five and half years and almost three years as a key guy in the Android team, he notes that it was time to start a new career chapter in his life.

Hugo Barra will join Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi as global vice president and he will certainly continue to push Android at Xiaomi as well. Although Xiaomi is not selling that many smartphones outside of China we are quite sure that Hugo Barra will change that as soon as possible as the company did manage to outsell Apple in sales last quarter as well as steal the title of top selling smartphone from Galaxy S4 duing the first half of the year with its own Mi 2S.

Xiaomi will certainly be the company to look at now that Hugo Barra is there, especially if he manages to use his influence in Google to push Xiaomi to the global market. Let's not forget that Lenovo is planning to expand its smartphone business and take on western markets as well.

Samsung has already shipped more than 20 million Galaxy S4 smartphones. The 20 million mark was apparently hit in late June and it is selling much faster than its predecessor.

The S3 hit the 20 million milestone in a hundred days and it seems that the S4 is selling about 1.7 times faster than the previous generation. According to the Korea Times, Samsung will shortly make a formal announcement, but for the time being the numbers are still unofficial.

It should be noted that the S4 rolled out in May, although many markets did not get it until June. In other words, it took Samsung less than two months to hit the 20 million mark, and for much of that time it did not even tap some markets.

It seems that Samsung’s Android juggernaut is running out of steam. According to Korean tech news site Etnews, Samsung is planning to cut monthly production of the S4 by 10 to 15 percent.

Samsung’s July order for Galaxy S4 parts was enough for about 6.5 million units, roughly half of what was ordered for May. So far Samsung’s orders have been steadily rising since April, but it seems growth is slowing down. In addition, Samsung is apparently planning to phase out the Galaxy S3 sooner than expected. Although it’s last year’s model, the S3 is by no means obsolete and it is still a pretty good buy if you can find an unlocked handset at a good price.

However, it should be noted that Samsung is introducing new S4 generation phones as well, such as the Note III phablet, S4 Mini and Galaxy S4 Zoom.

A new update has started to roll out for Samsung's Galaxy S4 devices sold in Germany. The update should fix at least some of the problems that Galaxy S4 owners were facing from day one, including the low free storage issue.

The new update is around 360MB heavy and with it, the 16GB Galaxy S4 ends up with 9.23GB of free space instead of the earlier 9.15GB. The update also brings an even more important move-to--SD option that should allow users to get even more free space.

The camera app has been updated to bring the new HDR video feature and Samsung apparently also fixed a couple of screen related issues including one that showed up during scrolling. The notification area got a Smart Pause toggle button and while the rest of the updates includes a couple of new icons, calendar update and bunch of other minor updates. The update is currently available only in Germany and on Snapdragon-based Galaxy S4 while Exynos one should follow up soon.

Samsung has shipped more than 10 million units of the Galaxy S4 since it debuted in April. It became the fastest selling Samsung handset of all time in a matter of days. Samsung said the S III took 50 days to reach the 10 million mark, while the S II got there in five months.

Apple managed to sell over 37 million iPhones in the first quarter, but bear in mind that Samsung has dozens of phones on offer rather than just one. Analysts believe Samsung will sustain the momentum and ship up to 30 million Galaxy S4s in the third quarter.

However, although Samsung and Apple dominate the market, it is not a two-horse race just yet. HTC is on the rebound and the HTC One is getting very positive reviews. LG’s smartphone business is booming, Sony is still alive and kicking, while Lenovo is betting on Asian markets and doing very well in China.

As rumored earlier today, Google has unveiled the a Samsung Galaxy S4 that actually runs on pure Android with an unlocked bootloader. The new Galaxy S4 will be available via Google Play Store as of June 26th with a price tag of US $649.

According to Google, the new Samsung Galaxy S4 will offer Nexus user experience and will work on both T-Mobile and AT&T networks in the USA with LTE support. In case you are wondering, it is a 16GB version and will, according to Google, recieve prompt system updates as they come out on other Nexus devices.

As noted, it will initially run on Android 4.2 Jelly Bean. It will be sold directly from the Play Store and, unfortunately, it will initially be available only in the USA.

Samsung's new flagship Galaxy S4 has yet to actually show up on retail/e-tail shelves around the world and while HTC One was an utter nightmare to disassemble and repair due to its aluminum unibody design, the Samsung Galaxy S4 might have an upper hand as it got a really high repairability score, most likely due to its plastic body.

Unfortunately, the teardown does not come from iFixit as then we would probably have a full comparison against the HTC One, but rather from Techno Buffalo, who managed to get their hands on it and do quick teardown. According to their report, the new Galaxy S4 is surprisingly easy to fix and while you can access battery, microSIM, microSD card slots you also can get to the rest of other components by simply unscrewing 9 screws that separate the front side from the back.

Of course, Techno Buffalo notes that the biggest and most expensive part of the repair would be the Gorilla Glass screen but the rest of the device should be easily repairable.